


Ragged People

by geckoholic



Series: author's favorites [37]
Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Reality, Community: thg_xchange, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-13
Updated: 2013-02-13
Packaged: 2017-11-29 03:57:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/682491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/pseuds/geckoholic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>They enlisted right after graduation; both of them, like many other kids from their school. Bad neighborhood, barely sufficient grades, nothing in the future other than a cheap apartment and a job as a cashier somewhere for those who get lucky. The military seemed like a good idea at the time. It wasn't.</em>  - Katniss/Peeta, contemporary AU/AR.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ragged People

**Author's Note:**

> For angylinni, based on the prompt “finding each other again” and herwish for a contemporary AU that explores their relationship in a different setting. 
> 
> Beta'd by nwspaprtaxis and warriorpoodle. Thank you both! ♥ All remaining mistakes are mine. 
> 
> Title is from "The Boxer" by Simon & Garfunkel.

When she comes home, Peeta's sitting by a window in the kitchen, staring out into their yard, gaze fixed on nothing in particular. He does that a lot, now. Katniss both does and doesn't want to know what it is he sees instead. 

She can imagine. Sort of. She hadn't been taken, like he was, but she's seen a war, too, the same one from a slightly different angle. Death and destruction and suffering, all the ugly things that get pushed to the surface when humans stop being human. 

”Hey,“ she says, nothing else, because terms of endearment aren't their thing. He turns slowly, blinks at her out of hooded eyes, once, twice, before he remembers that he's back home and supposed to behave like a person. He mumbles something back that sounds like her name, and he smiles, but it's nothing more than a smiley face scribbled over a sad and melancholic drawing. It doesn't fit and it doesn't belong. Katniss sort of wishes he wouldn't bother. 

She's the one who breaks eye contact, takes a folded piece of paper out of her bag and waves it. “Got it.” 

“Oh,” he says. “The check?”

Yes. The check. The one they've been fighting for for months, the one their lawyer made happen, the one that'll pay for this house. Normally, that'd be a reason to celebrate, but nothing's normal anymore and so he just nods, still with that horrible fake smile on his face, and looks at her with empty eyes. 

Katniss pins the check to a corkboard next to the fridge, and it takes all her composure to walk out of the kitchen slowly and with some kind of dignity rather than storming out of it like an ill-mannered teenager. 

 

***

 

They enlisted right after graduation; both of them, like many other kids from their school. Bad neighborhood, barely sufficient grades, nothing in the future other than a cheap apartment and a job as a cashier somewhere for those who get lucky. The military seemed like a good idea at the time. 

It wasn't. 

 

***

 

Most nights, Katniss goes to bed alone. Peeta stays up late. He either watches TV until the early hours of the morning, or hides in the attic room under the roof where he paints. The latter's worse; if he gets lost in there, he might not come out for anything else than a piss or a sandwich for days on end. 

She rarely peeks at his paintings. 

There are some older ones, from before their second tour that they’d hung up in the hallway and the living room, but the new ones are the ones she doesn't want to see. They are all red and brown and orange or blue and white schemes and stark contrast, nightmarish impressions of all the things he doesn’t – or can’t – talk about. 

The morning after the settlement, she finds him in the living room, snoring loudly in front of a blaring TV, and she's so relieved she wants to cry. 

 

***

 

They weren't together yet when they joined the Army. They hardly knew each other, in fact. It wasn't until their first tour that they fell for each other, and they didn't act on it until they got home. He told her later that he'd carried a torch for her since they were kids, longed from afar before he even knew what love was, but she still wasn't sure about it when they took off into the desert a second time. 

She's sure now. 

 

***

 

The thing is, Peeta didn't want the lawsuit. Not really. He knew as well as she did that they needed the money, and bad, but making money off of his condition deeply shamed him. He went to the evaluations and consults with an attitude and a stoic expression, though, and he told them the truth, how bad it can become. 

They had countless discussions about it, even after they agreed that it was their only alternative to relying on welfare. She knows what he thinks. She knows how he feels. But one of them had to be practical and make sure they didn't end up on the streets. 

For days on end, the check sits where she left it. It's like a physical presence, a third wheel to their relationship, something they evade and dance around. They don't talk about it either. 

On the fifth day, she takes it down, pockets it, and leaves for the bank. He watches her do it, but doesn't say a word. 

 

***

 

When Peeta was captured, their deployment was more than halfway over. Their sergeant had called them into a meeting the day before to announce an important mission, and they all got up with dread that day. Pessimism has no place in the military, it's more lethal than a bullet, but everyone knew that what lay ahead of them was all-or-nothing. Success or death. It was palpable, draped over them like a heavy blanket. 

Even so, Katniss never would've thought that she'd have to go home without Peeta. 

 

*** 

 

He's cooking when she gets back from the bank, and she's not sure if it's a peace offering or an act of defiance. He loved to cook before, but like so many other things, that changed after he was taken. 

Katniss knows some of the scars on his back are burns. It's the smells, he says, the heat. 

She's not quiet when she sheds her jacket in the hallway, kicks off her shoes, and walks into the kitchen. She knows he must've noticed her, but he doesn't greet her, doesn't turn around.

Not a white flag, then. 

She sees the way the muscles in his back tense when she steps closer to peer over his shoulders, as if he's expecting an argument, and all of a sudden the only thing she wants to do is to wrap herself around him, make sure he's here and with her and won't ever again leave her side. 

But they're both creatures of pride, hers maybe even more destructive than his. Without another word, she backs off and heads for the shower. 

 

***

 

Peeta came back from his imprisonment after three months. Katniss was still in the hospital herself, having been injured in that IED attack, hadn't been allowed to join the strike force that freed him and the others. 

When she first went to see him, he didn't even know her name. He started to scream and didn't stop until a nurse suddenly appeared to inject a sedative into his port and an orderly ushered Katniss away. 

 

***

 

He calls for her when she's rubbing herself down, after she's showered for so long that the hot water has run out. “Katniss! Dinner's ready! Get going if you want some.” 

She considers declining, alone upstairs with a book and a candy bar, but she _is_ hungry. He's still a good cook. No sense in letting the food go to waste. 

They sit down opposite of each other, as usual, eyes kept on their plates most of the time. He doesn't ask if she likes it, and she doesn't say so on her own. They clear the table together afterwards, carefully avoiding contact or conversation. 

She wants to reach out and touch him so much she aches. But she keeps her hands to herself picks up the dish soap and a towel, says, “You fed us. I'll do the dishes?” 

Peeta looks at her, eyebrows furrowed like he's trying to figure something out. She's about to ask him what's the matter, but then he shrugs, indifferent. “Knock yourself out.” 

And then he's gone, disappears into the living room to park himself in front of that goddamn TV. 

 

***

 

It wasn't personal, the doctors in the little military hospital on 13th Street said. PTSD. Conditioning. He didn't mean to think of her as the enemy, someone who abandoned him and sold him out, let him down. 

_They_ did that. 

That's not what it felt like, though, when he screamed at her, called her names and flung colorful insults at her as soon as she got within sight. 

 

***

 

They spend their evening apart from each other, as is the norm these days: he downstairs in the living room, she upstairs in their bedroom. One flight of stairs and a few doors between them, but they might as well be in separate _worlds_. 

Katniss reads until her eyes fall closed. She's been doing that a lot lately; anything else than but total exhaustion has her afraid she might not get any rest, that her brain will get stuck in a loop and keep her awake all night. Falling asleep half-clothed with an open book on her chest isn't ideal, but it works. 

Sometimes she wonders if her coping methods and Peeta's are really all that different. 

 

***

 

They kept him in the hospital for three months. The man that was released was closer to the man Katniss fell in love with than the wild, broken animal he was right after he came home, but it didn't take her long to work out that it wouldn't ever be like it was. 

He was quiet, wary; he kept looking at her out of the corner of his eye like he was sizing her up. He'd lost some of his light, the bright, unwavering positivism and determination to be happy against all odds that made Peeta _Peeta_. But they managed. They were slowly beginning to feel their way back to each other, until the military refused to acknowledge the extent of the damage that was done to him and the fights about the lawsuit pulled them apart all over again. 

 

***

 

When she wakes in the middle of the night, the noise from the TV are still wafting up the stairs. That's standard; nothing new. No, what makes her sit up straight in bed and listen closer is the _whimpering_ that they don't quite drown out. 

Peeta screams in his sleep, since he came back. He babbles, he begs, and sometimes he cries. All of that is hard enough to bear, but the whimpers? Those Katniss can't take. They sound like a desperate, panicked animal, not a human being. The first time she heard them, she almost thought there was a stray dog in their backyard, begging to be let in. It took her a few minutes to realize it was Peeta. And then she made the mistake of thinking about what he's been dreaming about, what's been done to him to make him sound like that. It made her feel nauseous and light-headed, had her grasping at the wall for support for a moment to avoid stumbling on her way down the stairs. 

She never let those thoughts near her again and some days she's afraid that's part of their problem. 

Nevertheless, she's not heartless. She doesn't wake him often, since he said he doesn't like it – possibly because he might be afraid of her gaining knowledge about his time in captivity that he's not ready to share – but this is too much. She won't let him stay in a dream that prompts those noises. 

When she rounds the corner into the living room, he has quieted some. She can't see his face, most of his body is hidden by the armchair he's sitting on and that she can only see the back of from here. But she hears him crying, now, and she almost turns around on her heel for fear he's woken up on his own and won't be happy to find her intruding. 

But it's too late; the creaky floorboards in their house aren't conductive to being stealthy, and he must've heard her. “Katniss?” 

His voice is thin, tear-strained. She closes her eyes for a second, curses to herself, before she answers. “Yes. I'm here.”

He takes his time to answer, and she tries to make sense of the snatches of talk she catches from the TV. It's familiar, somehow, one of those late-night-reruns everybody's watched pieces of at some point or other. 

“I'm –“ He clears his throat, starts again. “I'm glad you're here.” 

She's still in the doorway, can't see anything else than the silhouette of the back of his head against the stark light from the TV set, and his hand hanging off the arm rest. She sees him make a fist, open it, and then reaching out in her general direction. 

“Come here.” He waves his open hand, to give his request more urgency. “Please. Katniss.” 

When she finally moves, slowly walking over, it's almost as if she's on autopilot. She takes his hand, squeezes it, feels him squeeze back, and before she knows it he's pulling her down and she's following willingly until she's perched on his lap, forehead pressed to the side of his face and a hand curled into the fabric of his t-shirt over his chest. 

She didn't allow herself to miss it, but now that they're close again – the heat of his body seeping into hers, the smell of him all around her – she realizes how much she longed for this. His arms close around her, hands rubbing up and down her back. 

“I'm sorry,” she whispers. “For what happened to you – I never said that, did I? And for the lawsuit and for making you –“ 

“Don't. Shh. I know. You had to. One of us had to think straight, look at this with a clear head. We both know I couldn't do it.” He turns his head so they're facing each other, tips her chin up with two fingers to get the right angle, and kisses her. 

She closes her eyes, lets herself relax and melt into him, and tries to forget about tomorrow or the day after that. This won't magically fix everything, she knows, but for now she kisses back and hopes that it might be enough.


End file.
